November 16, 2009

Last night's new episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" — which has been working the "Seinfeld" reunion theme all season — finally got around to doing something with the painful subject of Michael Richards's disgrace over the shouting of racial epithets at some hecklers in a comedy club. Spoiler:

After learning that he suffers from the fictional Groat's disease (last mentioned in Season 2 of "Curb Your Enthusiasm"), Michael Richards once again finds himself in the line of fire for a racially fueled attack on an African American ... who just happens to be Larry's house guest Leon (the always hysterical J.B. Smoove), who posed as Groat's disease sufferer Danny Duberstein but who looked more like Louis Farrakhan from the Nation of Islam than a Jewish CPA.

Skewering Richards' brush with notoriety, Larry David has Richards angrily confront Leon in full view of several dozen camera phones, leading to him proclaiming that he wished he could call Leon a word that would make him as angry as he was right then. It's a savage parody of Richards' race-fueled rant to an African American heckler during a 2006 stand-up performance ... which happened to be captured on a cellphone.

Well you can buy each season of Curb Your Enthusiasm for 20 bucks on iTunes. Apple is up to season 6 now. Or you can buy the season 7 DVD for a comparable amount of money from Amazon.

If this is the only thing on HBO you really want to watch, it's probably a better deal just to go that route. I dropped HBO after having kids and Curb is the only thing I miss, although the last season I saw was 5 and that was way downhill from the first couple years.